“Teach me your mood, O patient stars!Who climb each night the ancient sky,Leaving on space no shade, no scars,No trace of age, no fear to die.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

O Emerson,

those stars of yours aren’t patient.

They’re always pulling at each other,

grappling with their sundry satellites,

comets, accreted astral alluvia, (etcetera)

wrinkling with their tug of war

space-time’s fabric as jostling knees

muss a once-smoothed bedsheet.

And they do leave scars on space;

shades so deep even light won’t escape.

But of course you can’t be blamed

if your gilded orrery didn’t account

for gravitic quirks of general relativity.

Trust me, you’re best not asking

anything from the likes of the stars.

Those supercilious celestial strumpets

send out snapshots of their shining selves

even eons after they’ve lapsed to darkness.

More than vain, they’re inconsiderate—

Bio: Jonathan Louis Duckworth is a current MFA student at Florida International University in Miami, where he works as a teaching assistant. He also serves as a reader and copy-editor for the Gulf Stream Literary Magazine. His work appears in or is set to appear in Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, the Kudzu Review, and Sliver of Stone Magazine.